Would it be possible to include a text file with mods / asset upgrades that basically tells FSO which files, and their checksums, and their official locations, should be loaded for a mod?
e.g., MVPs, have FSO check the loaded .vp checksums with the list found in the text file.
Any updatest to the .vps (say, a patch) would have their own text file, whcih would be added to the other when calculating.
If files are missing / corrupt / additional files are loaded / correct files are in unsupported locations (mod .vps in FS2 root), a warning message is displayed, telling the user about the problem, whilst stating that warning about additional or removed files are expected if they put in a custom mod that isn't officially supported by the base mod, or have removed files for performance reasons.
An option is given to the user to either "remind me later" or "don't show this again", or "view readme files" where the option to not show this again makes a note at the end of the associated text file that contains whichever mod has the issue detected (MVPs, FSPort, etc, whichever section the file(s) belonged to) that the user has chosen to ignore those certain files, and where "view readme files" opens up (if included) the readme files in each of the affected mod locations, which (hopefully) will have install instuctions.
This way, if anothe file goes missing / corrupt / additional file inserted, the warning will appear again, for the new issue.
Thoughts? I don't know if this would help or not, but I figured I'd suggest it and find out. Basically, a way for FSO to send users a raised eyebrow if they just dump a mod into FS2 root, or forget to download a required .vp .. Hopefully, a message something like "normally, these files go into \FSPort\ and these ones in \media-vps3612\ and these ones in \fsport-mediavps\, you knew that and you were just testing me, riiiiight?
I'm sure that idea is a bit off, but hopefully someone more learned than I can make something more useful out of it.